Solar array placement, electricity generation, and cropland displacement across California's Central Valley

Jacob T Stid; Siddharth Shukla; Annick Anctil; Anthony D Kendall; Jeremy Rapp; David W Hyndman

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155240

Solar array placement, electricity generation, and cropland displacement across California's Central Valley

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Aug 20:835:155240. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155240. Epub 2022 Apr 20.

Authors

Jacob T Stid¹, Siddharth Shukla², Annick Anctil³, Anthony D Kendall⁴, Jeremy Rapp⁵, David W Hyndman⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America. Electronic address: stidjaco@msu.edu.
² Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America. Electronic address: shuklas7@msu.edu.
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America. Electronic address: anctilan@msu.edu.
⁴ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America. Electronic address: kendal30@msu.edu.
⁵ Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America. Electronic address: rappjer1@msu.edu.
⁶ Department of Geosciences, School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, United States of America. Electronic address: hyndman@utdallas.edu.

PMID: 35460771
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155240

Abstract

Understanding agriculturally co-located solar photovoltaic (PV) installation capacity, practices, and preferences is imperative to foster a future where solar power and agriculture co-exist with limited impacts on food production. Crops and PV panels are often co-located as they have similar ideal conditions for maximum yield. The recent boom in solar photovoltaics is displacing a significant amount of cropland. The literature on agriculturally co-located PV array installations lacks important spatiotemporal details that could help inform future array installations and improve associated policies and incentive programs. This study used imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program for object-based analysis (within eCognition Developer), and from Landsat 5 TM, 7 ETM+ and 8 OLI for temporal analysis (using LandTrendr) to identify and characterize non-residential ground-mounted PV arrays in California's Central Valley installed between 2008 and 2018. This dataset includes over 210,000 individually identified panels grouped by mount and installation year into 1006 PV arrays (69% are agriculturally co-located). The most common type of mounting system is fixed-axis, and individual co-located systems tend to be small (0.34 MW). There were fewer single-axis tracking arrays, although the average capacity per system is nearly four times higher (1.20 MW). In total, the mapped arrays accounted for 3.6 GW of capacity and generated a cumulative of 32,700 GWh within the Central Valley during the study period. For the 694 identified agriculturally co-located arrays (2.1 GW), significantly sub-optimal installation practices were observed in the spacing and spatial field placement of the arrays. In terms of crop conversion preferences, commodity crops (pastureland) dominated the total cumulative area converted although specialty crops (orchards) also contributed to a large number of solar installations on cropland. These results provide important details of current PV placement practices; understanding these can help to inform future practices and guide future regulations that might promote solar installations while preserving agricultural production.

Keywords: Agricultural co-location; Crop loss; Installation practices; Packing factor; Photovoltaic; Spatiotemporal identification.

MeSH terms

California
Crops, Agricultural
Electricity
Solar Energy*
Sunlight*